Rushers

We’re so excited to present – The Kikay Barkada YouTube Channel! We’ll be posting our videos here (and we have a couple already lined up), and we’re really excited! Actually, if you have suggestions for videos you’d like us to do, please feel free to suggest them! Hopefully we get some ideas from you guys too so that we can start working on them ASAP. And who knows, we might even have guests to join us every now and then.

Especially for those abroad who are having a hard time getting a copy of our book, we’re happy to announce that it’s now available digitally, so you can read our labor of love on your iPad, Mac, Android & Desktop! Of course you can still have someone ship the hard copy to you, but this makes reading it more fun! Actually, even if you have a copy already, it might be fun reading it again on your iPad! Actually I’m downloading my own copy after this. If ever, it’ll be my first ever digital copy of anything! So go ahead and get your own digital copy now, click on THIS.

When we met Bela Padilla during the press launch for the Yahoo! OMG Awards, we knew we had to guest her. She’s drop-dead gorgeous, and has a sharp wit about her to boot! So when she got to the station, she was rarin’ to go, and hit the ground running.

Of course we had to have our epic pic. I have no idea why i tried to fit my face into the kettle bell handle, but I guess I’m odd that way. I look like a shmooshed duck. As always, everybody else looks normal.

Then of course came our epic rap-off. We skipped a week and missed one rap-off, mostly due to my “Lindsay Lohan”-ish episode, so we promised to make up for it this week. Hopefully we didn’t disappoint. At least we got it in one take! Again, our endless thanks to @JRhyan for always recording our celebrity guests on video every single time, even though he hadn’t had a stitch of sleep. Duper kaduper thanks Jaime!!!

Bela actually sounds good enough to be on radio. She’s got this really nice “cool chick” timbre to her voice, and she’s got a really adorable laugh that sounds interminable cute on air. Talk about a complete package! Thanks again, Bela!!!

It’s been a busy and hectic week, so although it’s a bit late, here’s my post on the Yassi Pressman guesting with the Kikay Barkada! The girl is cray-cray. She fits in so well with the kikayness and the bitchiness that is the norm in the morning. She may be 17, but she can make sabayan with us whatever it was we were talking about. And she got the zingers as well. Since she’s a great dancer, we thought we should skip the rap-off, and go for a dance-off instead. Here was the hot mess that was the first ever Morning Rush dance battle!

I swear, she’s a ball of energy! As you can see, I went low batt towards the end of the routine! This half-British kid was a handgul, and that’s just the way we like it in the morning! Cray-cray!

Grabe naman ‘to, we all got misty-eyed watching this tribute video. I know it’s supposed to be fun and all, but we all got choked up that you guys would go through so much trouble just to come up with a video like this for us. So much effort, so much love put into it. Even evil Gino (joke!) got really all mooshy inside when we were watching it. Wow, super thank you to the SG Rushers for such a heartfelt video. Ika nga ni Ellen DeGeneres: “Back at ya!!!”

As I promised, here’s the more comprehensive account of our Yahoo! OMG Awards experience. When we found out about our nomination, we were so excited and so stoked at the idea of winning this award. It would be special because it’s not so much about the show, but about the supporters of the show and how they can propel any show or celebrity to win in their respective categories. So obviously, we really wanted to win.

(Photo courtesy of @DelamarArias)

On the day of the awards, we really went all-out, like we never really prepared for an event before. We’re all self-confessed fashion victims, so we were thrilled to be styled for the first time by @katerro who gamely rescued us from the fashion police prison. So if ever we seem a little more well put together than usual, it’s all thank to Kat Erro for guiding us to the straight and narrow path, fashion-wise. We’d also like to thank as well Fred Penales and Miguel of Hairshaft for updating our ‘do as always, ever so supportive of our awards-night-look rescue mission.

When we finally got into the SM Arena, we were welcomed by a wall of sound, one area thundering with shrieks of delight: the RUSHERS. We really had goosebumps seeing them there, cheering us on, even having cut-outs of letters forming their battle cry for us (thanks Butterbaby!). We knew they were joining us, but we were simply choked up to see that kind of energy and love coming from them. Here’s a video of them in action:

When the nominees were being flashed one by one on the big screen, my heart was pounding like a jackhammer by then. By the time the winner was about to be flashed, I had a split-second gut feel that we had lost. So when they flashed our show’s photo, the Rushers went wild! I swear, nothing can describe the sheer electric joy we felt at that very moment. It’s a blur to me now, but I remember it feeling SOOO good.

(Photo courtesy of Mark Cerbo of nextjam.blogspot.com)

We went backstage for the interviews with the winners, and by then we had tweeted the great news and we were getting a flood of congratulatory tweets from everyone. We also had our share of celebrity sitings. One went like this: I was sitting down when I felt a kalabit on my shoulder and a meek voice asking, “Excuse me, can I have my book signed?” I said sure and looked up, and it was Shamsey Supsu! Can you imagine how my jaw dropped? She said she listens to the show and so we begged her to have our picture taken with her as well. She was the nicest girl ever! What an unassuming, down-to-earth celebrity. I understand why people love her so much. I hope we can guest her on the show one of these days! She’s definitely on my wishlist.

Backstage, we saw a familiar face – Xian Lim! We said hi, and we could tell from his initial expression that he didn’t recognize us (maybe because we actually looked decent that night). But the moment the recognition clicked, he gave us the biggest smile and even took a picture with us. Such a nice guy.

Of course we took the opportunity to snap a photo with his love team, the beautiful Kim Chiu. Kim was telling us: “Grabe, sobrang fan niyo yan.” Xian was so cool he even took a picture of Gino with Kim. Such feel-good celebs!

We also ran into Gino’s friend Bela Padilla. We definitely squeezed out a promise from her to guest on the show, so I’m hoping she’ll spill some secrets of Gino on air! I can’t wait to have her guest too!

We had so much fun that night, also communing with our co-radio jocks who were there as well. Of course the ever gracious Nicole Hyala and Christsuper, whom we always bump into. There’s just a mutual admiration thing going on there, lots of respect for what each team does on radio. And major props to Boys Night Out, who gamely approached us to congratulate us on the win. Slick Rick even tweeted his congratulations to us. Such a class act, that’s why if ever we were going up against anyone in the industry, it would be quite an honor to be up against them. It was fierce competition, without ever becoming ugly or negative. It just has to be said, congrats as well on a good fight, Boys!

Okay, so we get to the blind item. ALL the celebs we encountered were SUPER nice…except one. She was on her way to her seat when we approached, so maybe she was tired or not in the mood, but when Delle asked if we could have a photo with her, she rolled her eyes and made a face as if she were annoyed. To be fair, she said nothing, but the face spoke volumes. At first I thought I read wrong, but as we were walking away, we all asked each other, “Is it just me, or was she a total *****?” Apparently when we saw her reaction, we all wanted to just say, “Look, if the idea is so offensive to you, then we’re sorry for the intrusion and never mind the picture.” We just assumed that since the whole OMG Awards was about the fans, that most celebs would be okay to approach. Honestly, I’ve met tons of celebs, local and foreign, and not everyone was friendly. I understand that sometimes celebs get tired and are not in the mood, but this is the first time I felt so small interacting with a celeb. She made us feel 2 inches small. In her defense, I’m sure tons of her friends and fans would swear that she’s actually a nice person, but what we saw that night was NOT nice. But then that’s OUR version, we could be absolutely wrong about her. We ourselves are often accused of being suplado/suplada, but it’s only because we’re actually shy. So we’ll think nalang that maybe she’s shy as well and awkward in social situations like us.

UPDATE: Someone told her about the incident and she said she doesn’t remember rolling her eyes at us and so didn’t mean anything by it. She said sorry and no offense meant. And the look was probably because her falsies were bothering her. So I guess that’s that.

But to end on a positive note, everyone else was good vibes that night, the other celebs, the people behind the OMG Awards, and most especially the RUSHERS!!! Even until we left the arena, we met up with them and had a great time taking pictures and chatting (and the occasional teasing about our plus ones). We ended up grabbing a bite to eat to celebrate the victory, and we all slept with the BIGGEST smiles on our faces.

Again, thank you to the OMG Awards, thank you to Monster Radio RX 93.1, and most especially thank you to everyone who voted for us, online and via text, we owe this victory to you guys! Congratulations to us!!!